Surgeons’ Hall in Edinburgh, Scotland, is the headquarters of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. It is best known for housing the museums of Pathology, History of Surgery and The Dental Collection.
‘Robinson Crusoe’ author, Daniel Defoe wrote in 1976 that “the ‘chamber of rarities’ contained many curious things too numerous for him to describe.” Since then, the collection has more than doubled. While the original Surgeons Hall was completed in 1697, the current building was opened in 1832 after it was decided that the collection of medical artefacts had grown too large for the premises.
Joseph Bell was president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh between. He was a popular teacher noted for his diagnostic abilities which he based on his powers of observation of meticulous detail. One of his more well-known students was Arthur Conan Doyle who would later give up medicine to become a writer. After having achieved fame and wealth through the Sherlock Holmes stories, wrote to his former tutor “…it is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes.”
If you are at all queasy by the sight of body parts in jars, I would strongly recommend that you try to push past it and give this fascinating place a visit, next time you’re in the area. Some of the more mainstream artefacts house there is a collection of writings by Arthur Conan Doyle and a death mask of local serial killer, William Burke as well as a pocket book made from his skin.